


No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

by thestrangehistorian



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 19th Century, Aftermath of Wildfire, Burns, Gen, Great Chicago Fire, Historical Hetalia, Historical Memory, Mild Language, Physical Disability, Recovery, Scars, alfred goes through Some Serious Shit in the 19th century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-02 17:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14549955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestrangehistorian/pseuds/thestrangehistorian
Summary: It's 1871, and America has developed a horrible burn scar on his left shoulder with no explanation. Desperate to uncover the source of the injury, he travels to the site of the deadliest fire in his nation's short history - though it's not in the place he initially expects.A piece about a thing you didn't learn in history class: the deadliest wildfire in American history.





	No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

**October 16, 1871**

This was the last thing that Alfred needed right now.

He’d been doing really, really well. Crutches were inconvenient as far as support methods went, but apart from the occasional cramp, he could basically get around on his own. It wasn’t like it was before but that was a good thing. Antebellum, they called it now – a real pretty name for a real ugly time, Alfred thought. He’d be glad to toss his crutches into a bin and leave this whole century behind him. Things were bound to get better eventually.

Last week, he woke in the night, stricken with a haze of pain and fever.

He managed to contact one of his neighbors, who called Lottie, his former nurse from the war. She was married and had children now, but she’d settled in Maryland so that she could be on call for Alfred’s medical emergencies. And to her everlasting credit, when she got the telegram, she packed her things and showed up on his doorstep by morning.

The fire lasted for three days. Lottie gave him every remedy she could think of and continuously applied cool rags to his forehead, forcing water down his throat so that he wouldn’t grow dehydrated. When at last, the fever finally broke, an ugly red burn had spread across his entire left shoulder. Congress sent word that there had been some kind of fire and Chicago was requesting recovery aid. Lottie warned him that the scar would probably be permanent.

Alfred didn’t care for the cosmetics. He was an adult nation now, and he figured that all adult nations had scars.

As soon as Lottie had declared him fit, Alfred took the train out to Chicago.

Medill, the mayor, received him at the station and thanked him for his concern before taking him on a tour of the damaged area.

The business district had been burnt to a crisp – four square miles and millions of dollars’ worth of damages. Millions! Dozens dead and thousands homeless. Many buildings that remained standing were hollowed, skeletal and blackened. Rubble and ash littered the streets, which were sparsely populated by the relief crews. Volunteers had taken up the call around the city, not to mention all those that had come from across the Midwest. As they spoke, the city was revising its fire codes to prevent future disasters on this scale.

Medill walked as he rattled off these facts, leaving Alfred to hobble along after him on his crutches, occasionally pausing to clear things from his path. The mayor didn’t seem like a bad guy, just a little bit brusque. Probably his former career as a newspaper editor coming out of him. Alfred wasn’t exactly listening, though it sure sounded bad. The thing was, as he surveyed the city, Alfred felt that his initial suspicions were correct.

This did not explain his burns.

He was a little fuzzy on the details of how, precisely, his body was tied to the land. His body had finished growing ages ago, but the land was still growing. Alfred had experienced pain beyond pain during the war and a lot of it had to do with fire. Shenandoah, Savannah. He hadn’t known it was possible for something to hurt so much. But even that didn’t leave any physical, permanent scars.

America figured that if he could see, hear, touch, or taste something then he had a way to beat it. He was strong that way. The only things he feared were intangible. He feared what it would mean if he couldn’t explain his scars.

But fire was a natural thing, at the end of the day. Alfred thought that if a wildfire broke out in, say, Colorado right this minute – that wouldn’t hurt him. If a farmer in Oklahoma started a control burn, that wouldn’t hurt him, even if somehow it got out of his control. Even deliberate arson wouldn’t hurt him – not unless it was severe enough.

“Say,” Alfred said, interrupting Medill’s description of the new plans for this neighborhood. “You wouldn’t happen to know who started the fire, would you? Was it a lightning strike or – oh, I don’t know – an explosion or something?”

Medill fixed him with a hard, critical look.

“Are you suggesting that this was the work of anarchists?”

Alfred shrugged, wincing when he realized that he’d accidentally moved his left shoulder under its layers of poultice and bandages.

Medill clicked his teeth. “We are investigating the cause, to be sure. However, I assure you that with our new codes –”

“But you must have some idea how this could’ve happened,” Alfred insisted. “Right?”

The mayor sighed impatiently.

“Well, there are a few _popular_ theories,” said Medill, his voice heavy with scorn, “including one involving a little old woman and her barn. But I wouldn’t pay those any mind if I were you. In any case, there is no reason to suspect that –”

“Great!” said Alfred, turning away. “Good talking to you and, uh, keep up the hard work!”

Medill’s grumbling followed him for half a block

* * *

The thing about government was that he hated it.

America was fast approaching his first centennial. He’d just had a civil war. Slavery had been abolished after decades of useless in-fighting and arguing – and now, new shiploads of immigrants were arriving every day. It was an industrial age, an innovation age. The economy was still fragile and prone to collapse, but it seemed like there was no shortage of work and food, which meant that things would probably be okay in the end. And as soon as his legs fully healed, Alfred would be stronger than ever. He could just feel it.

And the main thing that America thought about regarding all of this was how much government was just terrible. He had grown up hearing England complain about the crown, and then America overthrew the crown. France’s whole country went mad and killed their royal family, which Alfred thought was a bit extreme, and now France just complained a lot about his ministers and the national assembly. Even Prussia thought his noble class was full of horseshit and he was one of the most prideful, arrogant guys that Alfred knew.

He didn’t know why he’d expected the government that he built to turn out any different. Youthful optimism, perhaps. The American government was especially terrible because it was no longer located at the epicenter of his country, and so news came late and tended to stay long past its expiration dates. But good luck convincing all the fat cats in Congress that it’d be really more efficient to relocate to Missouri, because they all loved to smoke their cigars and imagine that they, too, were icons of the old Virginia gentry. DC was chock full of stale, stinking news and every little hitch in the agenda sent all the suits dithering about in a reactionary frenzy – “Oh, what will we possibly do about this?”

Suffice to say, Alfred had pretty much given up on them.

But people – real people – they were great communicators. And really, if you wanted something done right, then it was best to just do it yourself.

Alfred found his first volunteer crew four blocks over, using piles of brick and slabs of stone as chairs while they ate their lunches. Billy Erickson, the gang’s leader, asked Alfred where he thought he was heading on those crutches.

“Probably just to get a sandwich,” he admitted. “There was this place –”

Everyone had a good laugh at that.

“Kid, the block’s burned out for miles. Share with Danny.”

Danny was thirty-eight and blind in his right eye, which was how he’d avoided the draft.

“Can’t damn well shoot with one eye,” he grumbled, handing Alfred half of a corned beef sandwich and making room for him.

“How’re you handling the search if you can’t see well?” Alfred asked, concerned.

“Most of the survivors have been cleared out ages ago,” said Billy. “We’re just cleaning up the block for when they decide to start building again.”

The youngest member of the crew was Levi, aged ten. As soon as Alfred sat down, he got up from his place and squeezed onto his other side, staring at him and his crutches in fascination.

“Did you fight in the war?”

 _Not directly._ Long winters, nights coated in icy dread – aching hot summers that melted the skin and bones – inexplicable pains, numbness, fevers that left him delirious and sick – nightmares nightmares nightmares –

Alfred tried to smile. “Something like that.”

“You’re a little young,” said Danny, frowning. “You couldn’t have seen that much action.”

“You crippled like Danny?” asked Levi.

“I’m not that young,” said Alfred, a bit defensive now. “And I’m getting better.”

“No shame in it either way!” Billy Erickson declared. “I signed up with the Seventh Illinois Volunteers – didn’t see a single bullet fired!”

Alfred raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t reenlist?”

“Couldn’t, I’m afraid. I’ve got four girls at home and a farm to tend.”

“Oh, so you’re not local?”

“None of us here are, except for Levi and Danny,” Billy confirmed. “I just came up last week to find a buyer for some of my horses but I couldn’t just leave once I realized what happened. Roy and Mack over there are in the same way, just in town looking for new work.”

Mack was a younger man – maybe eighteen, maybe twenty – with dark skin and close-cropped hair, quietly chewing on slices of apple, but he raised his hand when he was pointed out. Roy Wright was from Peoria, and without any further prompting, he announced:

“You know, it ain’t natural, all these people living in close quarters like this. Being stacked on top of one another – that’s for sardines, not people. I bet that was how the fire got so bad.”

Alfred seized on this. “So how do you think it got started? I heard something about a barn.”

Mack chuckled, shaking his head. “Yeah, I heard that one too. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow knocking over a lantern in the night.”

“I heard it was a robber with a peg-leg that did it!” Levi chimed in.

But Mack shook his head once more and said matter-of-factly, “Nah, that just got added in by people who thought that Mrs. O’Leary and her cow made for a boring story. If you ask me, there’s nothing to it.”

“You think?” Alfred asked.

“A barn fire is nothing to thumb your nose at, but this is way too intense. There’s no way that it wouldn’t have been noticed before it got out of control.”

“I’m telling you, it’s cause all these buildings are so close together,” Roy insisted.

Alfred considered this. Overall, it was a dead end as far as leads were concerned. But he was glad to see that the guys were animated and optimistic. That gave him some hope for the recovery of the city. After all, Chicago was one of his most important inland ports, the gateway to the center of his country. To think of it growing back better than ever after all of this gave Alfred some hope.

“Maybe they’ll fix that up when they rebuild the neighborhood,” Billy Erickson suggested. “Then you can live here when it’s habitable.”

“Nah, they’ll sell this block off to the highest bidder.”

The conversation gradually moved away from the fire as the guys discussed what to do after they’d finished their lunches. The afternoon was winding to a close and a lot of the other fire crews would be heading home to rest in the next few hours. Alfred chewed his sandwich slowly, trying to decide what he’d do next. He had to find an answer somewhere – but where?

Danny nudged him lightly in the ribs.

“If you’re interested in how the fire started,” he said, “there’s a couple of guys from Michigan about four blocks from here that might know something.”

Alfred frowned. “But why would some guys from Michigan know about your fire?”

“Well, they may not,” Danny admitted. “But they’ll probably know a thing or two about theirs.”

“Their – they had a fire in Michigan, too?”

Danny nodded. “I was talking to a couple of them this morning. Seems that there were fires in Port Huron and Holland on the very same night that we had our fire. No explanation. ”

Alfred’s mind electrified.

“You think it’s connected somehow?”

Danny shrugged. “Well, you know what they say. Twice is a coincidence, but three is a pattern.”

Alfred scarfed down the rest of his sandwich as fast as he could, thanked the guys for their company, and went to find somebody from Michigan.

* * *

Martin Everett was in charge of the Michigan gang, but he didn’t know anything about the fires either.

“We were dispatched out to Port Huron first,” he said. “But they said they didn’t need us, so we came down here instead. Only been in town for a day or two, I’m afraid.”

“But don’t you think that’s a little odd?” Alfred asked. “I mean, three fires on the same night? What could’ve caused that?”

Everett shrugged. “It’s been a dry summer. Maybe someone left a cookstove on, or knocked over a lantern. Maybe it was lightning. Who’s to say? It’s done now.”

Alfred sighed.

“Well, thanks anyway for your help.”

“Hey, kid,” Everett added, as Alfred began to move away. “Don’t get so discouraged. Why don’t you go ask the Milwaukee crew? They’ve been in town a bit longer than we have and I heard they had a fire up north recently.”

The news of a fourth fire buoyed his confidence that he was heading in the right direction, but his body was seriously starting to hurt from all the moving around. Alfred had begged Lottie to let him travel without the wheelchair and he knew that if he hurt himself somehow then she’d materialize right here from Baltimore and kill him instantly.

Luckily, the Milwaukee crew was close by – only two blocks. And they were packing up for the afternoon, with two of the guys planning to head for a local beer hall in the German district. German wasn’t his first language and hadn’t always been one of Alfred’s favorites – actually, it had been one of his least favorites at the time of his independence, due to Prussia constantly yelling at him during his military training – but it had grown on him over the last century. He liked the straightforward, can-do simplicity of a German conversation. And once they realized that they had a common language, the guys smiled and invited him along.

They were two brothers, Franz and Johann Eckhart, who had come over in the year after the end of the war. Alfred was tempted to ask if they knew any Beilschmidts back in Germany but refrained. In Milwaukee, they were greengrocers and volunteers with the local fire department. They had two other brothers – Joseph, who’d stayed home to run the store, and Wilhelm, who’d joined up with a lumber mill after he’d gotten married. They were discussing the impacts of the fire on urbanization, echoing the sentiments of Roy Wright.

“We thought Milwaukee was getting difficult,” said Johann, “but this is a different animal.”

Franz nodded wisely into his mug of beer. “We’re lucky that these fires have been happening so far away from us. I feel bad for Will, though. I can’t imagine it.”

Johann informed Alfred, “We got word from Joseph – Will sent us a telegram from up north. It seems that they’ve had to man the lighthouses twenty-four hours a day for the past week because the smoke has been so bad.”

Alfred was astonished. Fog was relatively rare over Lake Michigan, but smoke so thick that they’d needed to man the lighthouses for a week? Even Chicago’s air was clear – a bit chilly, thick and dry, but the smoke was gone and even the worst scorch marks were cool to the touch by now. “Why didn’t I hear about all this?”

“It seems like the telegraph lines were damaged.”

“It’s a miracle that Will got his message out.” Franz repeated, “Can’t imagine it. God only knows what happened.”

He drank deeply from his mug, nearly draining it in full. Alfred’s shoulder felt suddenly warm, though it was cool in the hall.

“Yeah,” he said. “Who knows?”

* * *

There was a train that ran directly to Milwaukee, but further north, the population began to spread thinner and thinner, so though there were many lines of transport, they ran infrequently. A stationmaster informed Alfred that he’d missed the train that could take him to Green Bay, and he’d have to wait until the morning. In the meantime, Alfred went to find a boardinghouse, trading the coins in his pocket for a not-uncomfortable bed and the promise of breakfast the next morning. 

He had plenty of time to gather his thoughts. He went into the Third Ward, where there was an English-style pub that sold most of the foods he’d eaten as a child, albeit the un-burnt versions. Alfred hated to admit it, but he still craved his former guardian’s cooking whenever he was upset or confused. He tracked down a pencil and wrote his theories on paper napkins while he made small talk with the locals. Most of them had heard about the Chicago fire in the newspapers and were discussing the urban question with interest.

Alfred had never been much of a city guy himself, at least not when he was growing up. After England had abandoned him in Virginia, he moved out to Philadelphia. After that, he’d lived in Boston and after the war, he lived in New York, trying to be as close to Congress as he could. Then, he’d tried his hand at moving west – living briefly in Kansas, and then in New Orleans, and in California. During the war, he stayed in Ohio and it was probably a little unfair to let his fever-tinged memories taint his experience of the state, but Alfred still thought he wouldn’t live there again for a long, long time. Besides, Ohio wasn’t exactly known for its beautiful scenic views and there was nothing quite like the city of Manhattan from a distance. A city was fast-paced and exciting, the streets positively teeming with folks from all walks of life, all around the world. Alfred couldn’t see a problem with industrialization if it helped people find work and improve their lives, if it brought people flocking to his shores in search of opportunity.

But now the fire had brought all that into question. Alfred laid awake on his right side, conscious of the possibility of rolling over and disturbing his still-healing burn. Four fires in one night – that had significance. One dry summer wouldn’t cause four different fires in four different places like that. And there had been no storms – no rain. The skies were clear enough for observers to see meteor showers and the passing of a comet.

Was that it? He wondered – a bright star falling to the Earth from the vast dark universe, splitting in the sky and catching fire when it struck the ground.

Alfred fell asleep dreaming of it.

In the morning, he took the train north into the wooded country of Wisconsin. Milwaukee was smaller and not nearly as dense as Chicago, and soon enough the scenery turned to farmland and patches of oaks, maples, and birch trees all in red and gold, the colors so bright they made fire feel unreal. It was well-past the harvest season, and most of the hills were naked but for the red brown earth beneath. Occasionally, a quaint little town would flicker into view before the train roared past it once more. They made a few stops – Cedarburg, Plymouth, Menasha – and Alfred changed trains in Fond du Lac. Lakes and rivers rolled by in the gentle slopes, evergreens stretching higher and higher, thicker and thicker. It was almost hard to believe – looking at the untouched nature of it all – that once upon a time, most of his country had looked just like this.

All of that idyllic loveliness faded away when they got to Green Bay.

It was too small to be a proper city though it had all the industrial trappings of one. Steel mills, ironworks, and paper plants – not to mention the all-important lumber industry. There were so many workmen’s camps in this part of the country that some of them even went on to become bonafide towns in their own right. A low haze of smoke hung over the city – people on the train closed their windows, muttering about the smell – and Alfred recognized the scent of a wildfire, the acrid taste of an uncontrolled burn that overlaid the heavy, metallic odor of industrial living.

His shoulder was burning, which was how he knew he was in the right place.

The first thing to do was to deliver the Eckhart’s message to their brother. Alfred balanced an overnight bag on his right shoulder and gingerly placed his crutches on the platform, grimacing as he prepared his descent from the train.

But the moment he put weight on his shoulder, it screamed in protest and Alfred – dizzy and stunned – collapsed onto the station floor.

Immediately, a swarm descended on him to try and help.

“I’m fine,” Alfred kept saying, waving away their hands and searching for his crutches at the same time. “ _Dankeschön – dziękuję_ – don’t worry, thanks – I’m completely okay. _Takk skal du ha, ja_ – don’t worry about me.”

Someone successfully grabbed him by the right shoulder and helped him to his feet. It was a young man with a thin, but thoughtful face. He pressed the crutches into Alfred’s hands and grabbed his bag, all without saying a word.

“I just tripped,” Alfred assured everyone who’d seen him fall, more embarrassed than hurt at this point. “Just underestimated my distance, that’s all. Thanks for your concern, but I’m really okay.”

The young man who’d helped him stayed until at last, the scene returned to normal. Alfred breathed a sigh of relief.

“Well, thanks for that, Mr. – ?”

His rescuer pressed his lips together, as if embarrassed. “Onni.”

“Onni? That’s a first name, I recognize it. It’s Finnish – you’re Finnish?”

“Yes,” he said, sheepishly. “Sorry, but my English still –”

“That’s just fine!” Alfred beamed. “I speak terrible Finnish, even though I really shouldn’t cause one of my oldest buddies is Finnish. Thanks for your help, pal, I really appreciate. I know – let me buy you lunch for your trouble.”

“Oh,” said Onni, shifting his own bag from shoulder to shoulder. “You really don’t have to.”

“Sure I do! Besides, you’ll be doing me a favor if you tag along. I’m in the process of solving a mystery, so I need to keep my strength up.”

“A mystery?” Onni raised an eyebrow, but more out of amusement than confusion. “Of what?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out!”

“And you’re going by yourself.”

He glanced down at Alfred’s legs, perhaps looking for the source of his injury. Alfred pretended that he didn’t notice.

“Always,” he declared. “Though I’m currently accepting applications for assistants, if you’re interested.”

Onni snorted. “No thanks. I have a job. I’m going to the telegraph office.”

“What a coincidence! So am I.”

Making friends was really the easiest thing in the world if you just kept at it.

The two of them walked to Green Bay’s post and telegraph office. Alfred learned that Onni was a doctor in training – he’d come to Wisconsin when he was fifteen and studied at the university in Madison. His mentor had gone ahead to assist victims of the wildfire that had taken place a little over a week ago.

“That’s what I’m investigating, too!” said Alfred, when Onni opened the door. “Here, I’ll give you all my theories in just a minute –”

He did not see Onni’s look of confusion and concern as he approached the counter.

The clerk gave him a look – like Alfred was being stupid on purpose – when he provided Wilhelm Eckhart’s address and asked for the price to send a message.

“Pensaukee is gone,” the clerk told him.

For a minute, Alfred didn’t register what had been said.

“What do you mean, _it’s gone?_ I’m delivering a message from his brothers, he just contacted them a couple of days ago!”

The clerk spoke impatiently. “Look, even if the town is still standing, we lost the telegraph lines, and the roads and railroads have been destroyed. There’s no way that we can send a message out there. You’ll have to come back later or figure something else out on your own. Next in line, please.”

Onni quietly paid for his postage and, when he was done, took Alfred by the shoulder.

“You mean you didn’t already know?”

* * *

The story of Peshtigo went something like this:

It was a long, dry summer but the Menominee River kept the town from growing too parched. They were tucked squarely between two Great Lakes, surrounded by acres and acres of virgin forest, thousands of years old. Peshtigo made the frames for doors and houses, blinds and windows. It was good money and the town prospered. The dry summer faded into an unusually warm autumn. Sawdust and sand lingered in the air when horses passed over the roads, kicking up dust. Trains passed through with hot, arid wind at their backs. Steam and smoke sang from the mills and farmers took extra care to make sure that their animals didn’t die of dehydration. But winters came early up north, and people felt confident that once the snows arrived, things would go back to normal.

On the night of October the 8th, fire fell from the sky.

* * *

It was apocalyptic. The railroads had melted – _melted steel_ – and the sand-packed roads up into Peshtigo had all turned to glass due to the heat. When Onni explained to him the predicament, the full weight of “lost telegraph lines,” hit Alfred like a train. Why hadn’t they known about this in DC? They’d lost the telegraph lines. They couldn’t know. 

People had carried the news out of the ruins of their hometowns, and nobody seemed to know exactly what happened. It took days for Onni and his mentor to learn about the fire in Madison, and by the time that they heard about it in Chicago, donations and fire crews from around the country were already arriving. But this was the difference between saying that a business district had burned and the idea that there were entire towns that might not even be standing anymore. Alfred didn’t know what to feel.

He insisted on accompanying Onni to his mentor in Peshtigo, even though his new friend tried to convince him to rest his legs, saying that he could deliver the Eckhart brothers’ message on his own. They hired a driver and Alfred got his first sight of the devastation.

There was a hard gray-black line that marked where the fire had finally died. Beyond it – a moonscape of ash and emptiness. Trees had been reduced to matchsticks and in some places, they’d been scorched to the roots, leaving craters in the earth. Their driver’s horses grew agitated – the smell was overwhelming to Alfred; he could only pity the poor animals – as they went further and further in. They passed charred bones of animals that couldn’t escape the flames, the carcasses of birds who had flown over the heat only to succumb to smoke inhalation.

It went on for miles, miles, miles.

Their driver was, like Alfred very interested in the cause of the fire. He had dozens of tales to tell, each more horrifying than the last.

The heat and the wind created a tornado of flame, so intense that it leapt across the Menominee River and soared all the way into the Door Peninsula. Animals burst into flames when they tried to flee; some people were trampled. Trees and trains and factory machines alike exploded, sending splinters and warped bits of melted metal flying in all directions. People were found dead, unburned, but with all the coins melted in their pockets. The river was freezing and those who tried to take refuge in the waters succumbed to hypothermia and shock. One man saw the wall of fire approaching and slit his children’s throats before killing himself as well, but in the end, the flames passed harmlessly over his house.

Alfred said, “Jesus _Christ._ ”

The driver seemed to realize he’d been insensitive. Apologetically, he added, “Folks thought that the world was ending. Can you blame them for going a little mad?”

Onni put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“You don’t have to see this, you know.”

Alfred took a deep breath. They’d lost the telegraph lines. By the time the world learned of this place, it would be too late. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. The century was moving too fast for there to be grieving. There were skyscrapers to build, industries to reinvent, and newspapers to print. And in a hundred years, the forest would grow back and then the sight of this devastation would belong to Alfred, and Alfred alone.

“Yes, I do.”

* * *

**December 10, 1871**

A fine layer of frost layered the ground around his house when he returned. Lottie, her heavy curls knotted thickly at the back of her head and wearing an ominous expression, was also waiting for him.

“I hope you have a good explanation,” she said, standing in his doorway with her arms folded. Alfred was glad to see her but had to raise an eyebrow.

“Hey, Lottie. Where’re your kids?”

“Spending some time with their auntie,” she snapped, in a voice which translated to _“Don’t you dare try to change the subject on me.”_ “You, on the other hand – for all I know you dropped off the face of the Earth! Not even a telegram - do you have any idea how worried I was? I know that you haven't been taking proper care of yourself. You have a bad shoulder on top of your legs –”

“My legs are fine!” Alfred said. “Mostly, anyway. Can I please go into my house?”

She followed him inside and sat down at his table. It was clear that she'd made herself at home while he was away; there was a pot of coffee and some cake waiting for him on the table. 

“Now there had better be some kind of decent explanation for all of this.”

Alfred sat down next to her, and told her everything.

When he arrived in Peshtigo, the only structure left standing was the church, its white paint scorched black and its pews coated in fine layers of ash. The nuns who ran the mission believed it to be a sign from God but to Alfred – who had always been a little skeptical and finally gave up on faith somewhere around 1838 – it felt more like someone’s idea of a twisted joke. Onni’s mentor – a genteel-looking man with a salt-and-pepper beard – immediately whisked him away to a makeshift infirmary. Survivors from the surrounding areas had come and gone, and though there were not as many crews as there had been in Chicago, the sight of aid workers in the town gave Alfred a sense of reassurance. In some places, they were already laying the foundations for new houses and each gust of crisp winter wind brought clean-scented air into the town.

The nuns supervised the aid. Alfred learned that his driver was called Thatcher and was in charge of delivering supplies to Peshtigo, making frequent trips from Green Bay and other towns further south. Though the survivors were shaken – they’d called it “nostalgia,” Alfred recalled, a “camp disease” that sometimes took over entire units – there was a sense of acceptance. The worst had already happened, fire had rained down from the sky and the world didn’t end.

Lottie’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t tell me that you stayed to work all this time?”

“Well,” said Alfred awkwardly. "I had to track down Eckhart and his wife anyway, and it seemed wrong to just leave without offering some help..." 

“I ought to smack sense into you,” Lottie snarled, “but you’re already injured enough.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” he reassured him. “I mean, I just did little things. I helped Onni with the medical things when I could and kept some records for the town – like how much food they were going to need and who wanted to stay and who wanted to leave. And sometimes I sent letters to other people's families and placed orders so that they could have - I don't know, basic necessities? I didn’t lift anything heavy or put any pressure on my legs, promise.”

It was clear by her expression that Lottie didn’t believe him.

(In fact, Alfred had indeed tried to help some of the rebuilding projects but Onni had a knack for appearing just as he was about to set his crutches down and inviting him to rest or take a lunch.) 

“Well, uh, once I was sure that they’d have the things they needed, I paid my respects at the grave. I didn’t know anybody who lived there, of course but it seemed like the right thing to do. Then Thatcher drove me back to Green Bay and I just took the train down to Chicago and then back here again.”

“Which grave?”

Alfred looked blankly at her for a moment. “Um. Just the grave.”

Lottie’s face registered surprise – and went ashen.

“You’re telling me they made some kind of mass grave?”

“When you put it like that, it sounds pretty bad,” Alfred muttered. And it had looked pretty bad when he first saw it - a pit in the broken earth behind the burnt-out church. Alfred nearly wept the first time he saw it but someone put their hands on his arm and whispered to him that it would be alright. Once the spring came, the grass would grow and they would put flowers on the grave, and they would remember their survival. “But it seemed like a – well, at risk of sounding crass – a logical thing to do. They lost almost two thousand people in about a dozen different towns, and they couldn’t identify all the bodies because of the burns, you know, so –”

Lottie hugged him.

She had done this before, but Alfred froze automatically with surprise. Sometimes, Lottie could be so hard on him that he nearly forgot that she was, fundamentally, one of the kindest people he knew. He moved to put his hands on her and return the embrace, then remembered that she was married now and wondered if that was even appropriate for them anymore…

“I’m sorry that that happened to you,” she told him, pulling back. “And I’m still worried that you could’ve been hurt, so I’m coming by again next week to do a check.”

“Sure,” said Alfred, sighing. “That’s what I get.”

Lottie frowned as she stood up, pulling her jacket off the back of a chair. “No. What you did was very kind, helping those people. You don’t deserve to suffer for that.”

Alfred put his hands on his thighs, pressing down just so. He could feel blood rushing through his muscles, so he thought it was alright. He still wasn’t sure he agreed with Lottie on this particular account. What was the saying again? No good deed goes unpunished. “Okay.”

“Did you ever find out what caused the fire?”

Alfred shook his head.

“Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was a comet. I don’t know if it matters too much at this point.”

Lottie patted his cheek - the way he imagined she might show affection to one of her own children - and told him to get some rest, leaving him alone in his house.

Winter came and winter went. Peshtigo survived, though its chances for genuine prosperity had gone - quite literally - up in smoke. Alfred received a letter from Onni detailing the results of their work. It was full of positive things, though Alfred knew that it must have been a long and hard winter. Nobody ever did find out exactly what caused all those fires. But the town survived, and in a hundred years, the forest would grow back. 

Alfred decided that he liked this better. Whether it was an accident or a meteor or an aborted attempted at the end of the world, it was over and they had all survived. He didn't want to think about destruction anymore. For every comet that fell crashing into Earth, millions more stars burned in the sky, just waiting for someone to reach out for them and understand their secrets. He threw away his crutches in 1875 and nobody else was any the wiser for knowledge of what had happened. There would be trials in his future, and doubtless there would be more pain. But the future held wonders that even he couldn't dream up, and his pain was behind him. 

It was seventy years before he had to think of Peshtigo again.

**Author's Note:**

> So this event absolutely fascinates me and I've been wanting to do more Historical Hetalia since I'm participating in the Brief History of Time event on Tumblr. Alfred kind of winds up in the Forest of Coincidence here because if he weren't this fic would be very different in tone/scope. I wanted to give a bit of insight into the human/cultural character of the Midwest so I avoid using state-based OCs and kept Alfred mostly alone, relying on the help of other people. 
> 
> I’ve mentioned this before but I have an elaborate headcannon involving Alfred’s health before, during, and after the Civil War. It involves him becoming temporarily paralyzed but I want to write more on it later so that's all I'll say for now but to note that Alfred’s body is recovering but he has become rather disillusioned. Though Grant is still instituting Reconstruction, the Gilded Age is fast approaching and "laissez-faire" is about to become the new normal. Lottie is an OC I use frequently - during the war, she served with distinction as Alfred’s private nurse. 
> 
> There were about five total fires in the Midwest on the night of Chicago Fire and as a result, the Peshtigo Fire has largely been forgotten by national historians, though it was pretty dramatic and devastating. A forested area larger than the state of Rhode Island was destroyed, though I wasn't able to find much photographic evidence for my research. All the incidents mentioned - including the father slitting his children's throats, the animals bursting into flames, and the melted coins/railroad tracks- are taken from survivor's accounts. 
> 
> During World War II, American and British scientists studied "the Peshtigo Paradigm" in order to create incendiary devices which were then used in the firebombing campaigns against Dresden and Tokyo - hence the title. Alfred tries to heal some of his personal pain by alleviating the pain of a suffering town and winds up, later, having that pain turned into a very literal weapon of war. 
> 
> And as always, let me know what you think - if you want me to write more, if you want to see some of the sources I used - and ask me any questions you might have! I hope you enjoyed reading! Until next time!!


End file.
